Modelling bubble collapse anisotropy in complex geometries

Abstract

A gas or vapor bubble collapsing in the vicinity of a rigid boundary displaces towards the boundary and produces a high-speed jet directed at the boundary. This behavior has been shown to be a function of the 'anisotropy' of the collapse, measured by a dimensionless representation of the Kelvin impulse known as the anisotropy parameter [Supponen et al., J. Fluid Mech. 802, 263-293 (2016)]. However, characterisation of the anisotropy parameter in different geometries has been limited to simplified analytic solutions. In this work we develop an inexpensive numerical model, based on the Boundary Element Method, capable of predicting the anisotropy parameter for any rigid complex geometry. We experimentally explore a robust measure of bubble displacement, showing that the bubble displacement in a range of complex geometries behaves as a single function of the predicted anisotropy parameter values.